A Cent Lesson in Persistence

mining business, he had the good fortune to be present on an occasion that proved to him that no does not necessarily mean no.
One afternoon he was helping an uncle grind wheat in an old- fashioned mill. The uncle operated a large farm on which a number of black sharecropper farmers lived. Quietly, the door was opened and a small child,
the daughter of one of the tenant families, walked in and took her place near the door.
The uncle looked up, saw the child, and barked at her roughly, What do you want?”
Meekly, the child replied, My momma say to send her fifty cents.”
“I’ll not do it the uncle retorted. Now you run on home.”
“Yes sir the child replied. But she did not move.
The uncle went ahead with his work, so busily engaged that he did not pay enough attention to the child to observe that she did not leave. When he looked up and saw her still standing there, he yelled at her, I told you to goon home Now go or I’ll take a switch to you.”
The little girl said, Yes sir but she did not budge an inch.
The uncle dropped a sack of grain he was about to pour into the mill hopper, picked up a barrel stave, and started toward the child with an expression on his face that indicated trouble.
Darby held his breath. He was certain he was about to witness a horrible beating. He knew his uncle had a fierce temper. In those days, poor children, especially sharecropper children, simply were not allowed to exhibit such overt defiance. When the uncle reached the spot where the child was standing, she quickly moved forward one step, looked up into his eyes, and screamed at the top of her shrill voice, MY MOMMA’S GOTTA
HAVE THAT FIFTY CENTS!”
The uncle stopped, looked at her fora minute, then slowly laid the barrel stave on the floor, put his hand in his pocket, took out a half-dollar,
and gave it to her.
The child took the money and slowly backed toward the door, never taking her eyes off the man she had just conquered. After she had gone, the uncle sat down on a box and looked out the window into space for more than ten minutes. He was pondering, with awe, the whipping he had just taken.

Mr. Darby, too, was doing some thinking. That was the first time in all his experience he had seen a black child deliberately master a white adult.
How did she do it What happened to his uncle that robbed him of his fierceness and made him as docile as a lamb What strange power did this child use that made her master over this man These and other similar questions flashed into Darby’s mind, but he did not find the answer until years later when he told me the story. Strangely, the story of this unusual experience was told tome in the old mill, on the very spot where the uncle took his whipping. Strangely, too, I had devoted nearly a quarter of a century to the study of that same power which enabled a small, illiterate sharecropper’s child to conquer a powerful figure of authority.
As we stood therein that musty old mill, Mr. Darby repeated the story of the unusual conquest and finished by asking, What can you make of it?
What strange power did that child use that so completely whipped my uncle?”
The answer to his question will be found in the principles described in this book. The answer is full and complete. It contains details and instructions sufficient to enable anyone to understand and apply the same force which the little child stumbled upon accidentally.
Keep your mind alert and you will observe exactly what strange power came to the rescue of the child. You will catch a glimpse of this power in the next chapter. Somewhere in this book you will find an idea that will quicken your receptive powers and place at your command, for your OWN
benefit, this same irresistible power. The awareness of this power may come to you in the first chapter, or it may flash into your mind in some subsequent chapter. It may come in the form of a single idea. Or it may come in the nature of a plan or a purpose. Again, it may cause you to go back into your past experiences of failure or defeat and bring to the surface some lesson by which you can regain all that you lost through defeat.
After I had described to Mr. Darby the power unwittingly used by the little child, he quickly retraced his 30 years of experience as a life insurance salesman and frankly acknowledged that his success in that field was due in no small degree to the lesson he had learned from the child.
Mr. Darby pointed out Every time a prospect tried to bow me out without buying, I saw that child standing therein the old mill, her big eyes glaring in defiance, and I said to myself, ‘I’ve gotta make this sale The better portion of all sales I have made were made after people had said

NO He recalled, too, his mistake in having stopped only three feet from gold, but that experience he said, was a blessing in disguise. It taught me to keep on keeping on no matter how hard the going maybe, a lesson I
needed to learn before I could succeed in anything.”
This story of Mr. Darby, his uncle, the child, and the goldmine doubtless will be read by hundreds of men and women who make their living in sales. To all of these, I wish to offer the suggestion that Darby owed to these two experiences his ability to sell more than a million dollars of life insurance every year—an incredible feat in his day.
Life is strange and often imponderable Both its successes and its failures have their roots in simple experiences. Mr. Darby’s experiences were commonplace and simple enough, yet they held the answer to his destiny in life, therefore, they were as important (to him) as life itself. He profited by these two dramatic experiences because he analyzed them and found the lesson they taught. But what of the person who has neither the time nor the inclination to study failure in search of knowledge that may lead to success Where and how is that individual to learn the art of converting defeat into steppingstones to opportunity?
To answer these questions, this book was written. The answer calls fora description of 13 steps, or principles, but remember as you read, the answer you maybe seeking to the questions which have caused you to ponder over the strangeness of life maybe found in your own mind—which through some idea, plan, or purpose which may spring into your mind as you read.
One sound idea is all that one needs to achieve success. The principles described in this book contain the best and the most practical of all that is known concerning ways and means of creating useful ideas.
Before we go any further in our approach to the description of these principles, I believe you are entitled to receive this important suggestion:
WHEN RICHES BEGIN TO COME, THEY COME SO QUICKLY, IN
SUCH GREAT ABUNDANCE, THAT ONE WONDERS WHERE THEY
HAVE BEEN HIDING DURING ALL THOSE LEAN YEARS. This is an astounding statement, and all the more so when we take into consideration the popular belief that riches come only to those who work hard and long.
When you begin to THINK AND GROW RICH, you will observe that riches begin with a state of mind—with definiteness of purpose and with little or no hard work. You and every other person ought to be interested in

knowing how to acquire that state of mind which will attract riches. I spent years in research, analyzing thousands of people, because I, too, wanted to know how wealthy people become that way.”
Without that research, this book could not have been written.
Here take notice of a very significant truth The Great Depression started in 1929 and continued onto an all-time record of economic destruction until sometime after President Franklin D. Roosevelt entered office. Then the Depression began to fade into nothingness. Just as an usher in a theater raises the lights so gradually that darkness is transmuted into light before you realize it, so did the spell of fear in the minds of the people gradually fade away and become faith.
Observe closely that as soon as you master the principles of this philosophy and begin to follow the instructions for applying those principles, your financial status will begin to improve and everything you touch will begin to transmute itself into an asset for your benefit.
Impossible? Not at all.
One of the main weaknesses of the human race is the average person’s familiarity with the word impossible People know all the rules which will NOT work. They know all the things which CANNOT be done. This book was written for those who seek the rules which have made others successful and who are willing to stake everything on those rules.
A great many years ago I purchased a fine dictionary. The first thing I
did with it was to turn to the word impossible and neatly clip it out of the book. That would not bean unwise thing for you to do.
Success comes to those who become SUCCESS-CONSCIOUS.
Failure comes to those who indifferently allow themselves to become
FAILURE-CONSCIOUS.
The object of this book is to help all who seek it to learn the art of changing their minds from FAILURE CONSCIOUSNESS to SUCCESS
CONSCIOUSNESS.
Another weakness found in altogether too many people is the habit of measuring everything and everyone by their own impressions and beliefs.
Some who read this will believe that no one can THINK AND GROW
RICH. They cannot think in terms of riches because their thought habits have been steeped in poverty, want, misery, failure, and defeat.

These unfortunate people remind me of a prominent Asian who came to America when he was a student to be educated in American ways. He attended the University of Chicago. One day President William Rainey
Harper
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met this young man on the campus, stopped to chat with him fora few minutes and asked what had impressed him as being the most noticeable characteristic of the American people.
“Why,” the student exclaimed, your eyes!”
What does the typical Caucasian say about people of Asian descent?
We refuse to believe, or we think odd, that which is not familiar or which we do not understand. We foolishly believe that our own limitations are the proper measure of limitations. Sure, another person’s eyes may appear different BECAUSE THEY ARE NOT THE SAME AS OUR
OWN.
Millions of people look at the achievements of highly successful entrepreneurs, such as Henry Ford, after they have arrived and envy them because of their good fortune, or luck, or genius, or whatever it is that they credit for the entrepreneurs fortunes. Perhaps one person in every hundred thousand knows the secret of entrepreneurial success, and those who do know are too modest or too reluctant to speak of it because of its simplicity.
A single event will illustrate the secret perfectly.
One day, Ford decided to produce his now famous V automobile engine, one of the most successful developments in the history of the automobile industry. He chose to build an engine with the entire eight cylinders cast in one block, and he instructed his engineers to produce a design for the engine. The design was placed on paper, but the engineers agreed, to a man, that it was simply impossible to cast an eight-cylinder gas engine block in one piece.
Ford said, Produce it anyway.”
“But,” they replied, its impossible!”
“Go ahead Ford commanded, and stay on the job until you succeed,
no matter how much time is required.”
The engineers went ahead. There was nothing else for them to do if they were to remain on the Ford staff. Six months went by nothing happened. Another six months passed, and still nothing happened. The engineers tried every conceivable plan to carryout the orders, but the thing seemed out of the question—“impossible!”

At the end of the year, Ford checked with his engineers, and again they informed him they had found noway to carryout his orders.
“Go right ahead said Ford. I want it, and I’ll have it.”
They went ahead, and then, as if by a stroke of magic, the secret was discovered. The Ford DETERMINATION had won once more!
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This story may not be described with minute accuracy, but the sum and substance of it is correct. Deduce from it, if you wish to THINK AND GROW RICH, the secret of the Ford millions. You’ll not have to look very far.
Henry Ford was a success because he understood and applied the principles of success. One of these is DESIRE—knowing what you want.
Remember this Ford story as you read, and pick out the lines in which the secret of his stupendous achievement has been described. If you can do this,
if you can lay your finger on the particular group of principles which made
Henry Ford rich, you can equal his achievements in almost any calling for which you are suited.

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